Sexy (Birthday) Party

In celebration of all that is glorious (poker, my 28th birthday, Stewie), I decided to hold a Sexy Party at my apartment Friday night. The night started off a bit slow with my calling Mike, only to find out he was moving inches per hour trying to get through the Lincoln Tunnel. Apparently this was not the best plan for entering Manhattan on a Friday night (who knew?), but his call to Matt for suggestions went unanswered (Matt did call back telling him that the Tunnel was probably not the best plan, but by then Mike was in a Gridlock). Amazingly though, Mike made great time overall and arrived before 8 pm (scheduled start time). Erich and Steven arrived shortly thereafter and then Chris and Bonnie. We held out a few minutes so Matt and Emily could arrive and get in the first game. Initially, I did pretty well in this game despite mediocre pocket cards. I think I actually doubled my chips by mid-game, but then Lauren arrived with awesome cupcakes and then Steve from LI showed up (it wasn't a 4 hour drive from MD like Mike made, but still, a one hour drive is nothing to scoff at...and neither was the Game Stop birthday gift he gave me).

My roomates Patrick and Ilya showed up for some socializing/beer and that completed the party. With everyone now in house, things got bumpin' and the temperature started to rise - literally. You see, my apartment building is a climate nightmare. Whoever designed it, created a building that traps in heat like gangbusters. In the summer it's sweltering. In the winter, it's still sweltering. With 10+ people in my apartment common room, it got hot real fast. Can you believe we had the air conditioner on even though it was 49 degrees out? Can you believe it didn't help?

With the temperature rising and 1/3 of the original Poker group out of the game (and starting up a game of Taboo), things got real ugly. There was lots of distraction, lots of joking, and lots of Taboo guesses like "Hayden's Mom!" I rapidly lost focus with the game I was playing and was staying in on hands like Q/7 off suit. The blinds were also really high at this point (because we wanted to make another game happen) and I wasn't prepared with how to handle this. So, I lost all my chips and moved on to the Taboo. Rather than have teams we just took turns having one person read the clues and let everyone guess. This resulted in a multitude of guesses that were raunchy and at my expense. I can't possibly list them here, but let's just say the funnies exchange ended in a reference to D.P. - to which Matt's girlfirend had to ask, "What's that?"

When it got late things wound down as people had to do various things before the witching hour, so we lost most of the gang. Still, we got in one last game of hold'em with a bit of a lower buy-in...thank God. I was dealt crap the entire game (7/2, Q/4, 6/3, 10/2, etc.). The blinds still raised every round and I simply couldn't keep up. The board wasn't giving me anything and people were pulling pocket pairs so that was that. At least Mike won that game, which in retrospect was particularly nice seeing as parking at the Chelsea Piers parking lot for soccer (what we did Sunday night) cost him $7.50 an hour.

So, Friday was a first for me. It was the first time I had a party where a large number fo my friends, many of whom didn't know each other, got together. It was great fun and my only regret is that I couldn't get all my local friends to make it (Dan and Greg were sick) and all my gaming friends from around the country. Had all of friends been there, that would have been unbelievably fun (nevermind that we would have had to carry people out on stretchers from heat exhaustion).

A full picture collection from this event can be found at http://singleh.shutterfly.com